Roman Virgil, thou that singest <br /> Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, <br /> Ilion falling, Rome arising, <br /> wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; <br /> Landscape-lover, lord of language <br /> more than he that sang the "Works and Days," <br /> All the chosen coin of fancy <br /> flashing out from many a golden phrase; <br /> Thou that singest wheat and woodland, <br /> tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; <br /> All the charm of all the Muses <br /> often flowering in a lonely word; <br /> <br /> Poet of the happy Tityrus <br /> piping underneath his beechen bowers; <br /> Poet of the poet-satyr <br /> whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; <br /> <br /> Chanter of the Pollio, glorying <br /> in the blissful years again to be, <br /> Summers of the snakeless meadow, <br /> unlaborious earth and oarless sea; <br /> <br /> Thou that seëst Universal <br /> Nature moved by Universal Mind; <br /> Thou majestic in thy sadness <br /> at the doubtful doom of human kind; <br /> <br /> Light among the vanish'd ages; <br /> star that gildest yet this phantom shore; <br /> Golden branch amid the shadows, <br /> kings and realms that pass to rise no more; <br /> <br /> Now thy Forum roars no longer, <br /> fallen every purple Cæsar's dome-- <br /> Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm <br /> sound forever of Imperial Rome-- <br /> <br /> Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, <br /> and the Rome of freemen holds her place, <br /> I, from out the Northern Island <br /> sunder'd once from all the human race, <br /> <br /> I salute thee, Mantovano, <br /> I that loved thee since my day began, <br /> Wielder of the stateliest measure <br /> ever moulded by the lips of man.<br /><br />Alfred Lord Tennyson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-virgil-written-at-the-request-of-the-mantuans/
